Dundalk’s finest are back with their third album, ‘Paddywhackery‘. Produced by The Coral’s James Skelly and recorded in an intense two-week period in Liverpool, the record finds the band pushing their raucous take on Irish folk music into new territory.

Following 2023’s acclaimed ‘Irish Rock ’n’ Roll’, ‘Paddywhackery’ explores what it means to be Irish now, bringing together centuries-old folk stories and songs with the band’s own material and a more rock ’n’ roll edge.

CLASH caught up with shortly after a session picking blackberries to talk ‘Paddywhackery’, political folk music, the changing perception of Irish culture, and why The Mary Wallopers have no interest in leaving Dundalk behind.

So is the band all based in Ireland?

Yeah, most of us are based in Dundalk. We’re all Irish-based.

And that’s where you grew up as well, is that right?

Yeah around Dundalk, that’s where we grew up. Katrina, our accordion player is from Donegal and Ken, our drummer, is from Dublin. 

It just made sense. Years ago we were like, “Oh, we should move to London or Manchester or somewhere like that.” And then it dawned on us that people do that, but it’s not very fair on the town you come from, really, is it? If you leave.

I understand why some people go and seek out more opportunities. Anyone I know who grew up in London has friends who were models or actors when they were like six. But where I come from, that is not a thing.

So there’s something important to us about staying where you are. Decentralising culture.

There’s a few Irish bands at the moment who live in London, aren’t there?

Yeah, of course. There’s always going to be. It’s not Irish navvies who move to London anymore. It’s like fucking people who do video editing or are in a band or something like that. That’s our new workforce that we’re sending over there. It’s changed a bit.

So, how is everyone feeling about the new album?

Pretty good. I think I’ve switched off a little bit from it. I’ve gotten rid of social media on my phone and I’ve just been getting away from it.

I think it’s probably good for you to not be always on it. I’ve just been out picking blackberries. 

And do you think that’s just a case of stepping away whilst the lens is focused on you during album release?

Maybe. I think just like anything, making an album is a pretty emotional or pretty draining experience. Obviously, not just draining, it has good sides too. But it’s just good to step back from it.

It stops you from becoming a total fucking arsehole, I think. If I was sitting on Instagram the whole time, fucking waiting to see what everyone had to say about our album. I just don’t care that much.

The world we live in at the moment – everyone is hyper-aware of what everyone’s opinions are, and I just don’t know how valuable it is, for me personally.

I’m excited for the album to be out. I’ll probably engage with it more when it’s actually out and done. I’m more excited for a bit of time to pass to see how it settles.

I’ve been listening to the album and really enjoying ‘Seán na Sagart’. It’s an old Irish story, right?

We wrote it because it’s a pretty interesting story, and there were no songs about it as far as we knew. It’s pretty gnarly as well. It’s like a horror film, this fella being employed to go around killing priests and bishops.

Our brother-in-law, Brendan, told us that story years ago, and then I was like, “Fuck, someone should write a song about that.”

I didn’t want to write an old ballad about it, so it’s quite fast.

It’s a great tune! In terms of the album as a whole – you pick from folklore and folk music, and also write your own stuff, what do you see as the overarching theme?

Well, I think the album is, in a way, a response to Irishness now, and Irish identity.

We were going to call it originally because I think pretty much every song has the word “Paddy” in it at least once.

It’s our representation of Irishness now, from the old stuff to more modern stuff that’s not as ballady. Like ‘Kit Kat Club’ is more rock ‘n’ roll and kind of dirtier. That’s why we settled on ‘Paddywackery’, because it’s kind of out of vogue, but being Irish is so in vogue at the moment. Everyone is learning ballads. We’re all kind of in on this thing of going, “Yeah, of course, we all love singing ballads and stuff like that.”

It’s interesting for us because we’ve been doing it for so long. We were doing it when it was out of vogue, and it just came into vogue just as we were coming into vogue. And now you can see the commercial elements coming into it, particularly Irish folk music, where we’d be suspicious about a bit of it. You can see that it’s marketing sometimes now.

But everything ebbs and flows, so it’s just maybe something about Irishness, this kind of identity: how it feels when you’re abroad and what it means to us, and what we want to represent. It’s about being Irish, I suppose, and how we interact with the world.

It’s interesting to witness the popularity of Irish pubs, particularly in London. There’s Guinness, Beamish and Murphy’s everywhere, and it feels like we’re in this kind of Irish cultural zeitgeist. But at the same time, there’s almost a crisis of identity. 

Yeah, 100%, one million percent. Because those Irish pubs were started because of immigrants. And now people open Irish pubs to make money. There’s still a lot about navvies and Irish immigration in it, but maybe exploring what it’s like now and what it means now, and are we going to just forget about all this stuff?

You guys don’t shy away from political conversations. It almost feels like you’re able to talk about the state of the world, as it is now, through these folk songs looking back?

Yeah, 100%. It’s actually a bit depressing when you think about it. These songs are 400 years old and they’re still relevant.

We never find it hard to shy away from anything, because the only reason I can think you would shy away from these sorts of things is if you want to be more popular or something, or if you want to make more money, or if you’re afraid of what people will say.

Which, to us, is not what art is for. It’s business at that point. Fair enough if that’s your goal, but it’s just not what we’re about.

Where do you think that combination of being a traditional folk band, and overtly political has come from? Is that what it’s like in Dundalk? Or was that what it was like in your house growing up? 

Our father worked at the tip, and he was a bulldozer driver. He found an accordion one day that had been thrown out, brought it home and taught himself how to play it. Me and Andrew started learning it. It’s a great analogy for the Mary Wallopers, finding it in the dump. 

It was always the spirit that was in the house growing up, more the spirit than traditional music itself. All our siblings were into different music too. One had a pirate radio station that played rave stuff, and one brother was into heavy metal and a little bit of punk.

Dundalk used to be the main road from Dublin to Belfast. So when acts were playing in Dublin and then in Belfast, they’d always add in Dundalk for a stop. So Dundalk’s exposure to music and politics, because of being so close to the border, was the perfect storm for creativity and a scene.

When I was a teenager everyone had a band and were putting on gigs in this old bowling alley. And when I was a child, there were Palestinian flags in Dundalk. It’s certainly the spirit of the place. Border towns tend to have a kind of anti-authority attitude. Dundalk is no exception. It still feels like that up here, which gives me hope for the future.

We didn’t come into rebellion or political stuff or music… we didn’t lick it off the stones. It was always around the place, from all directions. You could be fed worse.

The Mary Walloper’s new album ‘Paddywhackery’ is out now. Catch them on tour this winter.